Conclusion

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 1 JOHN 1:5

We have covered a great deal of ground in fourteen short chapters, and it would be easy to come away thinking of MacDonald as a writer of many subjects. In one sense he was. He wrote about the Fatherhood of God and the fire of His holiness, about obedience and childlikeness, prayer and self-denial, the love of neighbour and enemy, the new name and the truth in Jesus, the cry from the cross and the creation in Christ, the imagination, death, and the last things. He wrote about them in sermons, novels, fairy tales and poems. But beneath the variety there was one conviction, held with growing intensity from his boyhood in Huntly to his long silence at the end. It was that God is good — wholly, utterly, only good — and that He will not rest until His children are as good as He is.

One thread

Look back over the chapters and the thread appears. God is a Father, and a Father wants His children good. His love is a consuming fire, because it will not let evil stand in those it loves. Obedience opens the eyes, because the Father’s will is the child’s life. The child in the midst shows us both what we must become and what God is like. Prayer is the child’s speech with the Father, and its deepest answer is the Father Himself. Self-denial is the overthrow of the principle that I am my own. The love of neighbour and enemy is the Father’s love lived out in His children. The new name is the Father’s word to each child at last. The truth in Jesus is the life of the obedient Son; His cry from the cross is the faith of the Son in the dark; and the world was made in Him, and speaks of Him. The imagination mirrors that truth; death cannot break the Father’s hold on His children; and the last farthing — whatever we make of MacDonald’s hope — is the Father’s refusal to leave any debt of love unpaid.

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. ROMANS 11:36

What to do with it

If you have read this far, you face the danger MacDonald would have warned you about first. It is possible to enjoy his thought, to admire his language, to be stirred by his vision of God, and to change not at all. He would have regarded that as the worst outcome of all. He did not write to be admired. He wrote to get his readers to do what Jesus said.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. JAMES 1:22

So here is the plainest counsel this book can give, and it is his. Do not ask, at the end of it, whether you agree with MacDonald. Ask whether there is one thing Christ has told you to do that you are not doing. Then go and do it. Go back to the chapter that searched you most, and act on its points for reflection, one at a time. Then go to the Unspoken Sermons themselves, which are in the Ochorus library, and read them slowly, with the Bible open beside them, testing everything.

Two things to carry

Carry away, first, a deeper confidence in the goodness of God. MacDonald spent his life insisting that God is like Jesus, and that nothing we believe about Him should make Him less good than the best of men. That conviction, held within the whole teaching of Scripture, is the faith of the New Testament, and it is a cure for a great deal of fear. God is not reluctant to love you. He is not waiting to be persuaded. He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

Carry away, second, a deeper seriousness about holiness. MacDonald’s God will not be content with a respectable Christian who is still selfish at heart. He means to make His children good, and He will go to any lengths to do it. The believer who rests, as he must, on the finished work of Christ for his acceptance, should hear in MacDonald a summons not to rest content with anything less than the holiness for which he was accepted.

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. HEBREWS 12:14

A last word about the man

We have been plain in these pages about the points at which MacDonald must be weighed. He hoped and taught that every soul would at last be saved, where Scripture speaks of a judgement that is final. He rejected the teaching that Christ bore the punishment of our sins in our place, which stands at the centre of the apostles’ gospel. He rejected the imputed righteousness by which the ungodly are justified freely. He quarrelled with the doctrine of adoption. These are not small matters, and it would be no kindness to him or to the reader to pretend that they are.

None of this has been said to diminish him. It has been said because he would have demanded it. He hated nothing more than taking a teacher’s word for something without testing it against the words of Christ, and he wanted his own words tested too. Many readers, evangelicals among them, have found that MacDonald sent them back to the Gospels with new eyes, made them ashamed of their comfortable faith, and taught them to pray. They have been right to receive what he gave. They have been right, too, to read him with their Bibles open.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

MacDonald died at Ashtead on the eighteenth of September, 1905, after years of silence. He had spent half a century telling anyone who would listen that God is our Father, that Jesus shows us His face, and that the way to know Him is to do what He says. The right response to him is not admiration, but to go to the Father he loved, through the Son who alone is the way, and to do what He tells us.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there one thing Christ has told you to do that you are not doing? Do it this week.

2. Return to the chapter of this book that searched you most. Read it again, and act on the first of its points.

3. Read one of the Unspoken Sermons in the Ochorus library this month, slowly, with your Bible open.

4. Where has fear distorted your picture of God? Read 1 John 4:7–19 and let His love cast it out.

5. Read Hebrews 12:1–14 and ask God to make you holy, whatever it costs.

A PRAYER

Father, You are light, and in You is no darkness at all.

Thank You for Your servant George MacDonald, and for the many You have drawn nearer to Yourself through him.

Where he saw truly, let me see with him; where he erred, keep me in Your Word.

Do not let me stop at admiring his words. Make me a doer of Yours, and make me good, as You are good, through Jesus Christ my Saviour. Amen.